Factors Affecting Job Satisfaction: A Study of Export Manufacturing Organizations of Biyagama Free Trade Zone in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Employees are the most important factor and the sustainable long-term competitive advantage of an organization. In the world today, in an intensely competitive global environment there is a strong demand for a workforce and it is important to motivate and satisfy the employees to achieve a higher productivity in an organization. The main aspects of a workforce are motivation and job satisfaction. An employee's motivation is his or her relation and attitude towards work that determines success or failure. Job satisfaction is defined as how many employees like or dislike their work and the extent to which their expectations concerning work have been fulfilled. This research was designed to examine and evaluate the factors influencing employee satisfaction and to find the appropriate effect on the employee satisfaction towards better performance. In order to achieve the above main research objective, the following research problem was formulated to find the answers for the following research gap, "what are the factors that affect employee job performance of export manufacturing companies in Sri Lanka." The objectives of the study were to study the factors influencing employee job satisfaction and to evaluate the impact of those factors to employee job satisfaction and to develop strategies which help the policymakers of export manufacturing organizations in Sri Lanka. In this research, job satisfaction measured in terms of the motivational factors, the Level of Compensation (LOC), the Degree of Supervision (DOS), the Degree of Promotional Opportunities (DPO), the Relationship among Co-workers (RACO) and Job-Itself (JIS) were examined in order to find their impact on job performance. This research was conducted through a questionnaire and interviews/discussions with the officers and employees selected randomly from the export manufacturing companies operating at the Biyagama Free Trade Zone in the Western Province of Sri Lanka. The relationship was examined using the regression analysis by using a sample of 250 employees working in the above organizations. The results showed that there is a strong impact among the factors affecting job satisfaction. Moreover, the R square value given that the variation among variables shown by the model is due to chance and about 85% of the changes in employee job performance are explained by the changes in LOC, DOS, DPO, RACO, and JIS. Therefore, the human resources managers must refer their subordinate in all levels in order to motivate and satisfy them to achieve higher productivity. The utmost attention to the employee job satisfaction is vitally required in managing human resources, emphasizing that the production oriented organizations must efficiently and effectively manage all the company operations with a maximum utilization of their limited resources in a timely, accurate and reliable manner in order to fulfil the customer requirements, thereby maximizing the organizational wealth.